Joslin set for last Turf Moor game

Last updated : 11 March 2008 By Tony Scholes
Joslin is going out with a Wembley appearance; he's been allocated the Johnstone Paints Trophy Final between Grimsby and Franchise. It is not his first appearance there; he was an assistant at the old Wembley for the 1999 FA Cup Final between Arsenal and Newcastle, a game refereed by Paul Durkin.

He refereed our last home game of last season and I thought that could have been his last ever game. It was his second Burnley game last season and he had two very poor games, although neither were quite so bad as his performance earlier this season at Colchester when he earned himself a 'Rate the Ref' rating of just 47.09.

It is easy to criticise a referee when you lose but when you win away from home and are awarded a penalty in the game and still criticise him, I think that says a lot about his performance.

Before last season we'd never had too many problems with him despite that he did have the habit of being there during some bad away defeats - namely the 6-1 hammering we took at Ipswich when he had an excellent game.

It will be a major shock tonight if he keeps his cards in his pocket for the entire ninety minutes. The last time he did that was over three years ago and a League Two game between Kidderminster and Cheltenham.

This season, in 28 games, he's dished out 94 yellow cards and four red cards. The players he's sent off have been Soloman Taiwo of Dagenham & Redbridge in a 4-1 home defeat against Bradford City, Leicester's Patrick Kisnorbo as they went down 3-1 at Ipswich, Alan McCormack of Southend during a 1-0 home defeat against Oldham and most recently Walsall's Daniel Fox (now of Coventry) in a 1-1 draw at Port Vale on Boxing Day.

Of those yellow cards - 42 of them have gone to home team players and 52 to away team players. That is a lot closer than it was last season when over 70% of his yellow cards went to away team players.

It will be his last Turf Moor appearance, and hopefully it will be a better performance than ay of his last three Burnley games.

The assistants will be Kevin Mattocks (Lancashire) and Peter Quinn (Cleveland) and the fourth official will be Paul Kettlewell (Lancashire).

Previous Burnley games:

Season

Opps

V

Res

Y

R

Burnley players carded

a

1999/2000

Wycombe

h

1-0

4

0

Armstrong Davis

2001/02

Wolves

a

0-3

2

0

I Moore

2002/03

Ipswich

a

2-2

0

0

.

2002/03

Stoke

a

1-0

0

0

.

2003/04

Ipswich

a

1-6

2

0

I Moore

2004/05

Sheffield Utd

h

1-1

1

0

I Moore

2004/05

Stoke

a

1-0

1

0

Sinclair

2005/06

Derby

a

0-3

3

0

Hyde McGreal Sinclair

2006/07

Ipswich

h

1-0

5

1

Hyde (2Y) J O'Connor

2006/07

Coventry

h

1-2

5

0

Caldwell Elliott

2007/08

Colchester

a

3-2

4

0

Alexander Blake Carlisle McCann